Concepts, the Hardest Part

Eric Karjaluoto writes about concepts.

Project 4

Name, design, and package a new beverage for a specific consumer group based on what you learned in Exercise 4.

Students will:

• identify a successful market or emerging market in the beverage industry, and/or identify a consumer group that is in need of a beverage, be it a new and/or improved kind of beverage
• design their own beverage, name it, and brand it
• position it
• continue using their research and ideation skills from this term to invent/design their beverage
• use sound visual principles related to design, layout, composition, color
• use sound visual principles related to type choice, type/lettering creation, kerning and leading
• apply skills learned in other classes, especially the packaging and 3D class, to design an appropriate form for containing the beverage and multiple beverages

At the conclusion of this project students will:

• name their beverage
• design a wordmark/lettermark/logotype for its name
• design a single-serving package - consider how multiple flavors factor into your design, labeling, look and feel
• design a multiple-serving containment (the number of servings held, such as 3, 4, 6, 12 is not assigned, but your number of servings should make sense from a design/concept perspective)
• design 1 printed communication/promotion vehicle
• design 1 digital communication/promotion vehicle

This is the last design project of the term and last graded work of the term.

• All work submitted as digital files, PDF high-quality print or high-res TIFF files
• You may entirely digitally "mock up" your packaging or you may build a real, physical package in 3D and photograph it for submission as your PDF; photographing of your 3D package(s) should be done in an "award winning way" such as photography that is staged for catalogs or sent into design award annuals; avoid casual, low-lit, and low quality photos
• Imagery: students may source images from stock photo sources, taking your own photos is also acceptable, but get the best images in terms of quality and appropriateness
• Color: the entire color scheme is open, may be full color, one- or two-color, color choice should carry/further the concept

See class calendar for due dates and critiques.

Project 4: Worth 100 points

• 20 craft, rendering quality
• 30 composition/layout, design appropriateness and resonance
• 40 concept, research, clarity of message, uniqueness, design thinking
• 10 presentation, professionalism, overall quality of work

Exercise 4

Research the canned, bottled, boxed non-alcoholic beverage landscape.

Students will:

• learn about beverage markets and products 
• identify what beverages succeed or fail, and why

At the end of this exercise students will:

• have an understanding of why beverages sell or do not sell, from an outsider and consumer perspective
• be equipped with enough information to design their own beverage

Identify beverages that are successful, lacking or dipping in sales, and emerging/predicted to rise in sales. Present your research findings as a multi-page PDF, shown in class on Thurs. Be prepared to state who, what, where, how, why each is succeeding or failing or emerging in the respective category.

Show 3 beverages in each category below, one canned, one boxed/carton, one bottled. Pouches are also an acceptable area to explore, as are powdered add-ins and other mix-ins to make a beverage on the go, such as the powdered Propel energy powder or MiO liquid add-in.

1. page 1 successful beverages, one canned, one boxed, one bottled
2. page 2 those lacking/dipping in sales, one canned, one boxed, one bottled
3. page 3 emerging, predicted to rise, one canned, one boxed, one bottled
4. page 4 charting the three areas above into one cohesive graphic, with your total 9 beverages in one layout

Exercise 4: Worth 30 points

Assessment, maximum points:

• 3 - identifying three areas, each with three packaged drinks (canned, bottled, boxed)
• 15 - identifying who, what, where, how, why each succeeds, fails, emerges
• 2 - strength of research, argument(s) made
• 5 - craft/composition of slide layout
• 3 - following directions and professionalism
• 2 - spelling, grammar

Your research will be used to help you create your own unique beverage for Project 4.

Required Reading

Click to access the book Designing Brand Identity and read pages 2-64 to learn more about developing brand values, names, and identity.

To access the book, you need to be on campus using Winthrop's library site. If you are off campus, you will need to log into the library site using your winthrop.edu username and password.

Reading should be completed on or before Oct. 25.

Project 3

Invent a fashion label for women, men, tweens, teens, and/or children. Design a brand identity and a select number of communication programs to promote your fashion label.

Students will:

• research the fashion industry
• identify an area of fashion, and market to a specific demographic
• conduct visual research, looking into design opportunities
• design a name, brand, and visual components for your fashion label

At the project's conclusion, students will:

• have learned about corporate identity, such as wordmark, lettermark, emblem, and pictorial symbol
• have learned about designing a communication system with messages and branding applied to a variety of media
• have used an opportunity matrix to investigate design opportunities

Consider:

• What your fashion line will specialize in.
• Who your demographic is.
• Why they would want to engage with this brand, and how they would do so.
• Your fashion line's big idea, ideally stated in one sentence.

Final products:

• creation of a fashion line, including the name of the fashion label itself
• 1 logo/identity for the fashion label
• 1 tag, to be used on clothing
• 5 appropriate promotion vehicles (3 outside of the store and 2 digital)
• All work submitted as digital files, PDF high-quality print
• Imagery: students may source images from stock photo sources, taking your own photos is also acceptable, but get the best images in terms of quality and appropriateness
• Color: the entire color scheme is open, may be full color, one- or two-color, color choice should carry/further the concept

Deadlines: consult the class calendar.

Project 3: Worth 100 points

• 20 craft, rendering quality
• 30 composition/layout, design appropriateness and uniqueness
• 30 concept, research, clarity of message, uniqueness, research and design thinking
• 20 presentation, professionalism, overall quality of work

Mid-Term GOTV

The mid-term has multiple components requiring you to promote and post your Get Out the Vote poster and graphics. Read this project brief completely, making notes about deadlines. All of this work is graded, and amounts to 70 points for your mid-term.

Students will:

• use good documentation techniques, such as in-focus photography, when capturing and recording their work
• keep track of where their work is posted, and how it "lives" there

At the project's conclusion, students will:

• have documented their work on campus, as well as online
• captured a record of where their work was posted and how it has done online, including likes, favorites, and comments on social media 
• learn the value in documenting and keeping track of how their work "lives" and functions outside of the classroom
• have shared their design work with the general public, during the 2016 election season

For Tues. Sept. 27, students will need to print their Get Out the Vote poster and submit it digitally to AIGA.

I. Bring 5 prints of your Get Out the Vote poster to class. These should be printed to tabloid (11 by 17) with a bleed. In order to achieve a bleed, you will need to print to a larger sheet, such as 12 by 18 inches or 13 by 19 inches. You may also print them to the plotter where you can position multiple posters on one sheet, all with a bleed.

• Printing and cutting worth 14 points total
• craft of 5 finished posters, following directions

II. Students will also need to submit their AIGA GOTV poster through the AIGA poster upload portal. Note: you must login through the left-side menu in order to submit. Your poster for upload should be formatted according to AIGA's specifications. When submitting your poster, put Charlotte as your AIGA chapter affiliation since that is the closest location to Winthrop. Once it's uploaded, students will need to take a screen capture showing that they've uploaded their poster or provide other documentation such as a print out of an email confirmation that it's been received.

• AIGA delivery worth 14 points
• documenting your submission, following directions

Items I and II above are worth 28 points together, will count towards your mid-term worth 70 points in total.

For stages III and IV detailed below, students will need to complete their work on or before Sept. 29, end of class:

III. Hang 4 printed posters across campus. Spread yourselves out so we do not have too many posters all in one place. Hang your poster in a place that matters, that adds to your concept, and that relates to your poster design. Take photos of your work hanging up, with a photo capturing a "wide shot" that includes your poster, as well as the surroundings. Your photo should have the following:

• quality lighting
• quality focus, meaning not blurry
• worth 14 points for craft, following directions

IV. Share your GOTV poster designs to your social media accounts, making sure to tag the post with the following:

• #GetOutTheVote
• @aigadesign  
• @aigacharlotte
• worth 14 points for craft, following directions

Instagram would be the best place to do so since that is where this poster project is getting the most traffic and attention. But Twitter works too. Take a screen capture of your poster submission to social media as proof that it's online. Finally, monitor the two accounts above @aigadesign and @aigacharlotte over the coming days to see how it does, if it gets shared elsewhere. Take a screen capture if your work gets reposted, re-tweeted, etc. As of this writing, one student already had theirs picked up and one student has over 628 likes already!

The two items above, III and IV, worth 28 points together, will count towards your mid-term worth 70 points in total.

V. Finally, students are required to track the engagement their poster has in print and on social media. This is due Oct. 11.

• Visit the places your printed posters are hung twice per week. Are they still up? Have they been vandalized? Take photos each time you visit it, and name your photos with the day/time you took them. Your photos should have quality lighting and focus.
• Keep track of the likes, hearts, retweets, and reposts you get in social media: take screen captures each week documenting those numbers.

This final component, item V, is worth 14 points for craft and following directions and will bring the mid-term total to 70 points in all.

Place all visual documentation requested for the above in the Turnstile_2 folder, "Mid-Term GOTV deployment" in a folder titled with your name.

Project 2

Students should continue researching their directors and films to learn about the movies and their visuals, and you should begin to craft a look and feel for the film festival's promotions.

Students will:

• apply their research about their director, genre, and films to create a unified campaign on the assigned materials (see bottom of this post)
• use design skills to create campaign elements that are dynamic, attention-getting, and "on message"
• create design work using strong composition and craft 
• think "outside of the box" where necessary, especially when it comes to the campaign elements they've been assigned to create; remember, you can bend the campaign element in one way or another to further your theme and/or concept

At the project's conclusion, students will:

• have learned about ways to unify a communication program using typography, color, shape, material, and/or rendering techniques
• have learned about designing a communication system, with messages and branding applied to a variety of media

You must have one film festival with at least 8 films. Define your film festival and its theme by our Sept. 22 class. You should use your Exercise 2 research and feedback to provide you with further direction.

Theme can relate to, but is not limited to: genre (such as sci-fi, romance, war, western, gladiators, puppets, musical, or a combination thereof), mood, aesthetic, ethnicity, culture, gender, time, time period, style, form, structure, among others.

Students may have a film festival for a director, such as:

• The Wachowskis: the Matrix trilogy, Matrix 1, 2, and 3, Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, Speed Racer, etc. (theme related to sci-fi, dystopia, man versus machine, man versus alien)

Some directors have made 8 or more films, but some may not have. In these cases you can pivot this project away from one director and towards one theme. A themed festival would look like this:

• Man/Machine: Mad Max, Terminator Salvation, Iron Man, Tetsuo the Iron Man, The Lawnmower Man, Tron, Transcendence, Gamer, Elysium, Repo Men, Automata, etc.
• Note that the examples in this themed festival have movies from different directors, this is a new option for this project, and it is an acceptable option should you choose to shift your idea in this direction.

Whichever route you choose, director or theme, name the festival and brand it for Project 2. When it comes to branding and designing your promotional materials, including the festival's poster, images of the actors, stars, performers should not be relied on. Their faces should not be used as your primary promotional elements You must brand this through typography, imagery, texture, iconography, color, etc. Yes, it is a big challenge.

Final products

• 1 logo/identity to be applied on all of the graphics/promotions (see below), the logo/identity can be a singular identity or it can be flexible/manipulative and change
• Promotion Vehicles - Poster (see below), Public Transportation (such as bus panel, bus wrap, taxi top, subway, may also be a billboard), Postcard (save the date, front and back, will also include the names of all movies), Totebag, Facebook Event Page, Coffee Mug, Banner Graphic for Outside of Venue, Ticket(s)
• All work submitted as digital files, PDF high-quality print
• Poster shall be built at 18-inches wide by 24-inches high, set with a bleed, in CMYK as a press-ready PDF prepared for printing on our color plotter
• Color: the entire color scheme is open, may be full color, one- or two-color, color choice should ideally carry/further the concept.

Project 2: Worth 100 points

• 20 craft, rendering quality
• 30 composition/layout, design appropriateness and uniqueness
• 30 concept, research, clarity of message, use of Exercise 2 research and design thinking
• 20 presentation, professionalism, overall quality of work
• project 2 will have no revisions granted
• final delivery of work yields final grade